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WASHINGTON - It has been almost a year since Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was murdered in the nation's capital. There have been no solid answers about why he was killed until now.

Rich was shot and killed last July in Northwest D.C and police have suggested the killing in the District's Bloomingdale neighborhood was a botched robbery. However, online conspiracy theories have tied the murder to Rich's work at the DNC.

Just two months shy of the one-year anniversary of Rich's death, FOX 5 has learned there is new information that could prove these theorists right.

Rod Wheeler, a private investigator hired by the Rich family, suggests there is tangible evidence on Rich's laptop that confirms he was communicating with WikiLeaks prior to his death.

Now, questions have been raised on why D.C. police, the lead agency on this murder investigation for the past ten months, have insisted this was a robbery gone bad when there appears to be no evidence to suggest that.

Wheeler, a former D.C. police homicide detective, is running a parallel investigation into Rich’s murder. He said he believes there is a cover-up and the police department has been told to back down from the investigation.

"The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church" Saint Tertullian, 197 AD

In a statement released to the media, the family said that private investigator Rod Wheeler — who is a former Fox News contributor who once claimed that gun-toting lesbian gangs were roaming around the country trying to recruit children into lesbianism — was not authorized to speak with the media without the family’s permission. They also said that Wheeler’s services as an investigator were offered to them and that his work was paid for by an unnamed third party.

Nice sourcing. This was a real person with a real family. Have some dignity.

His organization later “clarified” on Twitter that “this should not be taken to imply that Seth Rich was a source for WikiLeaks or to imply that his murder is connected to our publications.”

And

No matter that the Metropolitan Police Department issued a statement saying there was "no indication that Seth Rich's death is connected to his employment at the DNC.”

And

Meanwhile, sources involved with the DNC’s investigation of a foreign hack of its files last year rule out the notion that Seth Rich had any role in the affair. “There was no indication that any insider was involved in this,” says one source, demanding anonymity in exchange for discussing the sensitive and ongoing investigation. “Every indication is this was a remote attack from a foreign government—the Russians. There is no indication that…there was any nefarious action taken by any employees in that environment.”Nor is there any evidence Rich downloaded and printed out the DNC’s internal emails, the source says: “This is a very sophisticated actor. This is not some kid coming in and downloading documents and handing them to somebody.”

On May 16, a story was posted on the Fox News website on the investigation into the 2016 murder of DNC Staffer Seth Rich. The article was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting. Upon appropriate review, the article was found not to meet those standards and has since been removed.

We will continue to investigate this story and will provide updates as warranted.

They disabled comments on the story for some reason.

(
Last edited by The Final Dakar; May 23, 2017 at 03:44 PM.
Reason: OOPS)

#SETHRICH WAS A HERO
I KNOW THAT SETH RICH WAS INVOLVED IN THE DNC LEAK.
I know this because in late 2014 a person contacted me about helping me to start a branch of the Internet Party in the United States. He called himself Panda. I now know that Panda was Seth Rich.

Panda advised me that he was working on voter analytics tools and other technologies that the Internet Party may find helpful.

I communicated with Panda on a number of topics including corruption and the influence of corporate money in politics.

“He wanted to change that from the inside.”
I was referring to what I knew when I did an interview with Bloomberg in New Zealand in May 2015. In that interview I hinted that Julian Assange and Wikileaks would release information about Hillary Clinton in the upcoming election.

The Rich family has reached out to me to ask that I be sensitive to their loss in my public comments. That request is entirely reasonable.

I have consulted with my lawyers. I accept that my full statement should be provided to the authorities and I am prepared to do that so that there can be a full investigation. My lawyers will speak with the authorities regarding the proper process.

If my evidence is required to be given in the United States I would be prepared to do so if appropriate arrangements are made. I would need a guarantee from Special Counsel Mueller, on behalf of the United States, of safe passage from New Zealand to the United States and back. In the coming days we will be communicating with the appropriate authorities to make the necessary arrangements. In the meantime, I will make no further comment.

STATEMENT FROM
KIM DOTCOM

"The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church" Saint Tertullian, 197 AD

April 20: Butowsky and Wheeler meet at the White House with Spicer “and provided him with a copy of Mr. Wheeler’s investigative notes.” Spicer asks to be kept up to date with developments.

April 25: Wheeler meets with Detective Della-Camera, the lead homicide detective on the Rich case. The night before, Butwosky had emailed Wheeler, writing: “Della camera is either helping us or we will go after him as being part of the coverup.”

May 14: Butowsky leaves a voice message on Wheeler’s phone, claiming: “A couple minutes ago I got a note that we have the full, uh, attention of the White House, on this. And, tomorrow, let’s close this deal, whatever we’ve got to do.”

Moments later, Butowsky sends a text message to Wheeler claiming President Trump had read a draft of the story, and “wants the article out immediately”:

Shortly after, Wheeler calls Butowsky to demand “an explanation for the false statements about him in Zimmerman’s article.”

Butowsky replies that “the quotes were included because that is the way the President wanted the article.”

Wheeler also calls Zimmerman to demand the quotations be removed from her story. She accepts, but never actually removes the quotes, eventually citing protests from her bosses at Fox.

In an audio recording transcribed in the lawsuit and provided to Folkenflik, Wheeler confronts Zimmerman and Butowsky over the fabricated quotations. Wheeler argues that “much, much of the information did not come from me” — and Zimmerman acknowledges: “Not about the emails. Not the part about, I mean, the connection to WikiLeaks.”

“But the rest of the quotes in the story did,” she adds.

“One day you’re going to win an award for having said those things you didn’t say,” Butowsky says.

May 23: Fox News retracts the story. A statement released claimed “article was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting.”

I don't trust the guy, but it sounds like a lot of this is verifiable.

Also, for context, CNN retracted a bad story and fired three people involved in two days. Far as I know there's been no consequences for this article at Fox.